


Like All Delicate Things, You Know No Permanence

by Ghostigos



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Depersonalization, Disabled Character, Dissociation, Explicit Self-Harm, POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, Suicide Attempt, soulless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 09:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9650612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghostigos/pseuds/Ghostigos
Summary: Something in you is gone. It's gone and it's never coming back. Despite your parents attempts, Asriel's words, you know that they can't fix whatever inside that they drained empty. The shards of broken glass inside you has been shattered into nothing but useless atoms; there's no point trying to glue it back together.In which an unnamed event leaves Frisk and Chara extracted of their DT, and ultimately their SOULs. Neither take it well. Perhaps Chara being the worst off.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to my first story! Granted, I've written tons of stories for myself for years, but this is the first story I've decided to publicly upload
> 
> As for the backstory for this fic, it's just centering around what would happen if Chara and Frisk lost their DT, which would heavily affect their personalities and leaving them both soulless. How did it happen? Was it someone who stole their DT to end the resets? Maybe to retrieve the files for themselves? Who knows! It's up to you!
> 
> Content warning for an explicit suicide attempt and self-harm scene, so please be careful lovelies

Your find yourself twirling a lost string from your yarn absentmindedly. Your sweater project has been long since abandoned, and it's slumped across the couch from where you tossed it off your lap. You weren't angry at it, but it was lack of interest that ultimately caused you to surrender.

You hear footsteps behind you and turn to see Asriel. In his hands he carries a tray of soup and a sandwich, cut and sliced and placed exactly how you like it. Or, _liked_ it, you suppose.

He sets it down on the coffee table patiently. "Here you go, Chara," he says, and gives you a rather forced smile that you're used to seeing. He doesn't like seeing you broken. "Do you want me to feed you again?"

You suppose you should feel embarrassed, humiliated even, at his offer. You should be feeling lots of things, but you don't. You stare at him for a while, expecting him to come to the silent conclusion himself. You're not the best at making decisions anymore.

Asriel doesn't squirm under your blank gaze anymore; his immunity to your silence encourages him to place a napkin in your lap and he goes to fetch the bowl from the tray.

Finally, he allows his eyes to advert to the unfinished sweater. He frowns. "I see the sweater didn't work?" he asks. You don't answer; he doesn't expect one.

His smile returns almost unnaturally. "Well, we'll keep trying, okay?"

No answer.

"Open up," he says, directing your attention to the soup-filled spoon he's holding. You oblige.

As you're eating, Asriel continues to chatter about what's happening in town, about the neighbors, about daily news. You're barely listening; whenever he speaks about a person, all you envision is the face of said character. Any sort of emotions or strings that are supposed to be attached are gone; you think he knows that, because Asriel seems to catch himself whilst he's talking and falls silent. Without another word, the two of you finish up the food and he takes the dishes back to the kitchen.

You want to feel thankful. You want to say, "Thank you Asriel, my best friend whom I love and cherish more than anything in the entire world." But you don't; the words would be nothing more than white noise. Whenever you see Asriel, there's some sort of gap that swallows your stomach; he's just another face to you. He shouldn't be. You should be loving him and laughing with him and giving him gifts and teasing him. But you don't. You can't.

He returns almost immediately and sweeps the sweater away to sit with you on the couch. You know that he thinks it's his life mission now to keep you company, to care for you. You don't know what to feel about that.

Asriel says nothing more. He just takes your hands and holds them in his. Some sort of nonverbal reassurance to you that you're okay, we'll get through it. You want to take your hands away.

You don't.

The days merge into this same routine. Days turn into weeks. Weeks to months. Everyone's voice blurs into one. Bouts of encouragement, empty promises that you'll be okay again, that it'll get better. Hopeless apologies fill your room, cards and flowers all looking and smelling and filled with the same words. The same "I'm sorry"s, the same "wishing you well"s. "I love you" is just a result of pen on paper.

Your mother removed Frisk from your bedroom, in fear of inevitable codependency. You now reside in their empty bed; you haven't checked if it still smells like them. When you see them around the house, they are nothing but a ghost floating directionless, their expression glazed. Some days your mother has to hold their hand in order to help them stand or instruct them to eat. She has become their personal caretaker, as Asriel has now become yours.

You both are lost causes, and you're beginning to suspect that they both know that. It doesn't stop them from feeding you, bathing you, granting you gifts of past pleasures. You don't know why. You know it would be logical for them to give up.

"I know how it feels," Asriel explains to you one day as he detangles your hair, which is still damp from a shower. You don't bother to delve deeper into his claim; you know what he's talking about. "I don't remember much, but I remember feeling...empty. Numb and empty to affection. It's like I wanted people to stop trying."

You know he's struggling to reach for you; he's digging inside himself to search for memories long forgotten in order to give you a lifeline of some sort. But you've already detached yourself from anyone else. Their efforts are all in vain, no matter how much you feel as though you can relate to Asriel's statement if you just try. But you're not going to; Asriel may have been alike to you once, but he's not now. He's alive and well and feeding himself without having others help him. You're not like him anymore; you're beginning to realize you never were.

Still, you let him continue. If he wants to believe that he's connecting with you in some way by discussing his dark past, by all means go ahead.

"What I'm trying to say is I know what it's like to have an empty soul," Asriel continues. He's tying your hair into a braid; you don't protest. "It's _torture."_

His voice becomes strained, like recalling his days as a flower has left him breathless. Maybe he's seeing his fur as flower petals, his limbs as roots that drown him into the soil.

You've never been a flower.

Asriel gives himself a small shake and resumes to talking about how it'll get better, how people how are here for you and it's not going to be like this forever. You wonder what it's like to hear those things and to have them stick somewhere; all his reassurances and attempts of comfort become background music. You wonder what being a plant is like.

He does this often, giving you parts of himself and offering stories of his time as a soulless flower. He gives you balls of yarn and bars of chocolate, like he's trying to trigger some part of you to find some bit of your past self. You stare at him and place the yarn and chocolate to the side.

Something in you is gone. It's gone and it's never coming back. Despite your parents attempts, Asriel's words, you know that they can't fix whatever inside that they drained empty. The shards of broken glass inside you has been shattered into nothing but atoms; there's no point in trying to glue it back together.

You don't feel hate. You don't feel agony. You don't value happiness or return love and affection. The only benefit of having you around, you suspect, is that you look pretty. You give the living room the same effect that a nicely-placed picture would radiate.

Your mother seems to suspect that her commitment to Frisk has left you feeling envious for her attention (it doesn't). She tries to make up for this by feeding you pie (you don't eat it), by encouraging you to knit (you don't), by telling you stories that you liked when you were smaller (you don't like them anymore), by showering you with kisses and hugs and the comfort of her presence (you don't feel them).

Sometimes your father visits. He drags you and Frisk and Asriel along on tours of the city, to fancy restaurants. He shows you off to friends and unknown civilians; like he's proud of you. He gives you little gifts and at one point introduces you to his growing flower garden. He gives you small gardening tools and instructs you on how to dig up a plant properly. Your thoughts drift to how Asriel was a plant once; the thought leaves you staring blankly at a flower your father told you to dig up. Eventually he pries away the tool from your grasp and invites you inside for tea.

After several months, your parents agree to take you to a proper psychiatrist.

You sit down at the couch that the lady gestures to. She gives you a small smile, shakes your hand, tells you that her name is Miss Debbie and that she's pleased to meet you.

She talks about trauma a bit and then asks about yourself. You don't respond; you don't know what to say. You pick at the couch.

After a minute she speaks a bit to softer to you. She uses a lot of words of comfort, telling you that she's safe and that its okay if you don't open up right away. You don't say anything. You let her talk.

When your appointment is over, Miss Debbie takes your parents aside and encourages them about a psychoanalysis test.

Upon your next visit, Miss Debbie gives you a pencil and leads you to a table. "This is just a quick survey for us to get an idea of what's going on in your head," she tells you. She hands you the test. "Call me when you're done."

The test takes you about five hours; you're not sure how to voice how you feel. How can you explain in a page-long paragraph how you can't feel anything?

Eventually you decide to just fill the page with nonsense. You ramble about flowers and knitting and at one point you vaguely mention the painful extraction of your Determination.

When you turn in the test, you watch as Miss Debbie's face becomes dark. She tells you to sit in her office for a while as she contacts your parents.

You don't go to her office; instead you head to the room that you overheard Frisk was being interrogated in. You don't knock on the door when you find it; when you enter the room, a man with a beard and glasses looks up from his notes expectantly. Frisk is sitting across from him, and you notice how shiny and red their face is.

"Hi," they mouth to you.

"Can I help you?" the man asks.

You don't respond. You head over to where Frisk is seated and lean into their small frame. You haven't interacted in months because of your mother's lingering presence. You don't know why, but you suppose she's scared for the two of you. Maybe she thinks the minute you touch, you'll blow up.

Frisk doesn't protest. You know they can't because they feel the exact same thing you do: nothing. They lace their hand with yourself and they squeeze so hard it hurts. Unlike you, they want to feel something. They want to cry and laugh and sing and talk. You squeeze back and dig your nails into their knuckles because you know it hurts and you want to give them some form of emotional response.

Their face twists into a flash of pain, but it's gone in an instant.

You can't identify the feeling that warms your cold chest.

When Miss Debbie finds you, she's with your parents and Asriel is with them too. They all look upset about something, but you don't ask why; you already know why. Miss Debbie settles herself down on the floor and takes your hand in hers. She explains that she knows what happens wasn't your fault, that you can heal from this and it may seem impossible but you'll get through it.

After that visit, you're handed samples of fancy little pills that you're forced to try out and see if you feel any better. The first batch makes you so tired and weak that you can barely get out of bed. The next make you vacuum the house at midnight because of your speedy heartbeat. Some make you feel angry, or happy, or sad, but it's all artificial. Still, the happy pills made your family ecstatic, and you took them for a little longer to please them. It was a week before the happy pills made you vomit, and the next day they were gone.

Sometime in between your medication experiments, Frisk is assigned to a wheelchair.

You don't know why. Medication gone awry or perhaps their lack of exercise. Either way, your mother expressed concern about their growing inability to walk without her assistance. Asriel tells you that the wheelchair is only temporary and that Frisk is going to get better, like everything else that's going to get better.

A few items are positioned differently here and there in order to improve Frisk's mobility around the house. The stairs are refurnished with an odd device that will help Frisk move downstairs painlessly. More flowers and visitors fills the house, expressing concern and sorrow and offering support. You find that you enjoy not having all the attention on you, even if some guests are persistent to talk to you.

You want to feel grief for Frisk. You force your body to react, to feel something. But no good comes out of your attempts. You try to find the agony that you should be experiencing; your best friend is legally handicapped. You recite your apology cards and try to get them to mean something to you. 

You go so far as to watch a marathon of sad movies with Asriel; you look over constantly to see Asriel sniffling and going through boxes of tissues. You force yourself to eye the deaths, the heartbreak, the loss of lives that could never happen. You try to insert yourself into the characters, you try to picture yourself holding Asriel's dying body in your arms. Nothing clicks. When Asriel begs you to turn it off, you do so.

You never realized how broken you were.

One night, you sneak out your room for a trip to the restroom, and you hear your mother's voice drifting from the kitchen. It's only after you hear your father's stern tone that you gain a mechanical sort of interest. You tiptoe down the steps.

"...kill them! I'll kill all of them for doing this to our children!" your mother is saying, and her voice sounds angrier and darker than you've ever heard it.

"Tori, I'm just as mad as you are," your father reasons, his voice softer than her. "But we have to focus on the fact that perhaps an insertion will help Frisk and Chara become well again."

An insertion?

"Don't be ridiculous, Asgore! What are we supposed to do, find a human that's willing to sacrifice their soul for a cause that might not even work?"

"Couldn't we donate a monster's soul?" You hear a timid third voice speak up timidly. Asriel.

You dare to creep closer.

The kitchen is silent for a moment before Asgore says, "That may work. If we can inject the components of a monster's soul into them, we may be able to help them experience emotion."

"'Inject components'," your mother repeats. Her tone is deathly quiet. "Asgore, my children are not experiments."

"Toriel, I know you're upset—"

"And what if that doesn't work!" She's yelling now. "What if they become worse than they are now?"

Your father doesn't respond.

"Frisk can hardly walk now!" She continues. "Chara can't feed themselves! They can barely _speak_ anymore! And you want to put them through more pain for a plan that might not even work?"

"Tori—"

"My children are _broken!_ " She suddenly wails. "They're gone forever! Oh god, what am I going to do?"

Something claws at your stomach. You can't identify what you're experiencing, but to hear, to have confirmed, that you're a lost case, sets off a series of distant emotions that swirl in your brain.

You really are broken. You're gone forever.

You find your feet walking to the kitchen, to make your appearance known. Your mother is crumpled on the floor, wracked in silent sobs, while Asriel hugs her neck in a weak attempt for comfort. Asgore is leaned against the counter, his face buried in his hands. You're hurting these people. It's your fault they're all so distraught.

It wouldn't be the first time you hurt them like this.

Asriel is the first to notice your presence, and he seems to freeze entirely. He picks himself up from off the floor and steps towards you, and you feel yourself pull back. He pauses and gives you a face that widens with pain and shock.

"Chara," he whispers.

Immediately your parents look up from their positions.

Your mother makes a weak attempt to wipe away her tears. "Oh dear," she sniffs, her voice hoarse. "Chara, dear, we... We didn't mean to wake you."

Asgore reaches for you, but he stops when you give him a blank glare. "My child, we're sorry. If you heard anything, we—"

"I know."

Your voice is small and tiny, and inexperienced, but it's firm and fixated on your mother.

Her glassy eyes become wide. "Wh—" Something clicks, and she springs to your feet and runs to kneel at your side. You're stiff as a board. "Oh no. No, no, sweetheart. You're not broken. I was upset, I didn't mean it. I-I'm so sorry."

She continues to whisper panicked reassurances and cups your face in her hands. You simply look at her. Somehow that brings more tears to her eyes.

"We just want you to be okay again."

You push away from her grasp and head back upstairs. "Chara, wait!" she calls. You're already upstairs. You lock your door.

The next day is overwhelmed with more apologies and speeches from your parents. They give you clarifications on how not broken you are, and that they want you to get better and they're going to do everything they can. They smother you with hugs and food.

Asriel suffocates you the entire day. His face is plastered with guilt on his participation with last night. He brushes your hair, he holds your hand, he watches your former favorite movies with you and starts on knitting a scarf for you with your former favorite colors.

You've never realized how fast everything moves around you. You sit and watch your life fly by like you're watching a film. You've become so detached, and it's all because some people thought it was wise to extract the very culmination of your being. They wanted to see what would happen; now you're living the aftermath of what happened, if you would even bother to call this living.

They should've just killed you and attempted to dissect your soul that way.

An idea begins to form in your head.

You entertain the idea of suicide as Asriel paints your nails a mint color. Some sort of human instinct inside burrows fear into your head, but you know that it's a ridiculous fear. The fear of death and what comes after. But you reason with yourself, how what comes after could help enact some switch in your head. How happiness and peace could ensue after you're gone.

Asriel hums as he finishes the first layer. You look at him as he's distracted; you think how he's going to miss you, how he will feel grief and agony upon discovering you've moved on. You don't know why. That's when you discover how much of a burden will be lifted upon your family's shoulders. You can't feel anything, you can't love them anymore. Whatever you were, you're _gone._ You're _broken._ Dying is only doing them a favor.

You recall the first time you died for them. How you consumed poison for days on end; maybe going in a similar way will be sufficient.

You remember the various bottles of medication in the bathroom.

When you're tucked into bed that night, you wait a good couple of hours before sneaking into the bathroom and locking the door.

You take a good look at yourself in the mirror, but you're not sure what you should be seeing. You're not sure you really wanted to see anything. You're just a face. Nothing attached.

You paw through the cabinet and you're surprised to find a razor. You didn't even know monsters shaved. Or was this once yours? You don't know.

One more test.

You need to make sure you can't feel anything. And that starts with going back to old habits.

You detach the razor's blades and snip a small bit of skin on your arm. Usually, the cut is fueled by some form of anger, or grief, or overall hysteria. All you reflect on is the sting.

You try again. Nothing.

You scrape your skin raw. On the edge of death, you want to feel. You want proof that you're not a hopeless case. You want to prove them wrong.

Your arms are sliced into ribbons, and you feel nothing.

You trash the blades and rummage for the bottles.

When you find them, there's no doubt in your mind that this is for the best now. Your family doesn't have to watch over you. You're nothing but a vegetable; some sort of shining example of how you should never give up hope, because things may get better one day.

You crack open the bottle and eye the pills. There's a lot of them; no use chugging them down all at once. You might as well take one at a time.

You flip on the water and rinse out a small bit of your blood off your arms. No need to leave behind a huge mess for them to clean up. When you're satisfied, you take a glass and fill it to the brim with water.

You pop the first pill into your mouth and take a swing of the glass.

Guess there's no turning back now.

Still, this was a bit better than eating flowers. You remember scarfing them down, and sometimes a leaf or a stem may cause you to choke. 

Sixteen pills in and you're starting to feel loopy.

A knock on the door makes you jump out of your skin.

"Chara?" Asriel calls. "Are you in there?"

You don't respond. You take another pill.

"Chara?" he repeats.

Eighteen pills in and you choke on your water.

"Are you okay in there?" He sounds alarmed.

You start to shove multiple pills at once into your mouth. Your lungs are starting to clam up.

Asriel knocks again. "Chara, open up!"

Black dots are cornering your field of vision.

"Chara, come on! I know you're in there!"

You're panting hard now and you grip the edges of the counter. Something is rising in the back of your throat, and you're drooling.

"Chara, _please!_ " His voice is cracking.

You hold your stomach like a vice. As you take groggy steps away from the sink, you instinctively begin to cough. Acid is dripping out of your mouth onto the floor, and is mixing with the droplets of blood.

Everything has become blurry. Pain begins to claw your stomach open, and you feel like you need just one, just one more pill to finish the job.

As you reach for the bottle, you slam to the floor.

The faint sound of a door breaking echoes around your brain.

Something picks you up off the floor, and you eye the colors of Asriel's pajamas, all but blurry in your vision. You're about to die. Your brain is shutting off and your heart is racing so fast it's going to leap out if your chest and you are literally going to die.

Everything in your body is shutting down. The last image you perceive is Asriel throwing his head back in what looks like a wail. _"Mom!"_

Darkness suffocates you.

-

Your eyes open to white.

The rythmetic beeping of a life support system draws your attention, and you lazily droop your head to the location of the noise. The minute you turn, you brain explodes.

You feel raw inside and out. If you're still alive, they had to dissect your stomach. They put needles in you and patched up your torn arms and struggled to keep you alive.

If you just swallowed the last of those pills you wouldn't be here.

A figure becomes to take form through the blur, and you immediately recognize the yellow-and-green pattern of Asriel's sweater. You wonder if he's seen that you're still alive. The way he perks up answers your question.

"Chara!" He breathes, and he sounds like your name is a rare treasure, a gift he'd never have the luxury of repeating.

You blink hazily in response.

He gets up and reaches for you, and smothers your face in his hands. "I was s-so scared I... I thought you... I thought that...." He doesn't finish and presses his forehead gently to yours. His eyes are shining, and you realize how wet his facial features are from crying.

"P-please... Please don't leave again Chara, I-I just got you back! I just got you back," he sobs. He whispers the last sentence over and over, and something tugs at you. You need to be feeling something.

You realize that the most logical thing to do is to comfort him.

Even if your heart isn't in the gesture and your arms sting from the cuts, you reach out and cup his cheek.

He's taken back by your response, and you begin to think you did something wrong, but he brings his hand over your own and holds it firmly.

He sniffs. "I know why you did that," he whispers.

You figured that he did.

"I did it too, remember?"

You don't recall. You suspect it shows on your face.

Asriel settles on the side of your bed and rubs your hands affectionately. "When I was a flower. My first reset. It was because I...didn't want to exist anymore."

He looks at you. "Chara, it's hard. It's so, so hard to be without a soul. I know that."

Your head is killing you, but you try to register what he's saying for the first time in weeks.

"We haven't been fair to you," he says. "We've been trying to...pick up where we last started. And that probably didn't work. We just didn't want to accept what happened."

Asriel releases your hands and begins to pick on his shirt. A sign you recognize for when he's nervous.

"You're not gone, Chara," he murmurs. "You're still here. You're just different."

You don't respond.

"You just need to build yourself back up again, is all," Asriel continues gently. "And that might mean you're just going to be different altogether."

You try to imagine it. You know that you're different. You're gone and you're broken and you can't express emotions. You can't look or talk to people. You can't find interest in things. You can't do anything. If you weren't weird and just wrong, you could change.

"I can't feel," you whisper.

Asriel looks back at you, and his eyes are bright, but not with tears. He clasps your hands firmly again, and he's looking at you, looking at all of you, looking at what you're lacking and what you will never have.

He smiles. "That's okay."

-

The next few days are busy. Since suicide attempts are viewed fairly negatively, you've been given professional counseling and more expensive medication. You're diagnosed with health terms that doctors can work with, and they give you more complex answers when you dare to ask if you'll be okay.

Frisk is given better treatment as well. Their wheelchair has been discarded, and they've returned to their former habit of sign language for communication. They may smile with an empty expression, but they're trying, and that's what matters.

Your parents flood you with affection, but it's different now. They don't reflect on old habits you enjoyed, or memories of past tranquility. They treat you like you're new, like they're seeing you for the first time. If you spot an intriguing food you may not have noticed before, they buy it for you happily. If you end up spitting out a meal with disgust, they simply take away the dish and offer another.

You're not broken anymore. No one informs you that you'll be better. They say that you're improving, that you're new. Emotions don't come naturally to you, still, but induced hormones added in your medication helps you gloss over the core numbness that you generally feel.

Something in you is always going to be gaping, waiting to swallow you whole. You know that. Whenever you're alone, it consumes you, bit by bit, pulling you deeper into its inevitable embrace.

But you have distractions. You have people and family and help. You can find some form of existence that's in between. You can build from the foundation of apathy.

A year after your attempted suicide, you find yourself drawn to a flower shop. You tug Asriel in alongside you, and marvel at the bursts of various colors pulling you this way and that. Some raw emotion inside of you finds the color intriguing. You like flowers. Hormone-induced or not, flowers interest you.

After a few minutes of sauntering through the plants, just appreciating their beauty, you stop. Bright buttercups stare back at you, lush and dripping with water. Their intense color leaves you breathless.

You notice Asriel take the potted plant in his arms and he goes to the cashier immediately to buy them. You blink as he hands you the bouquet of yellow.

You don't say thank you, but his eyes are still shining.

When you return home, you place the pot on your windowsill and simply stare at them. The way they absorb the light of the sun attracts you to them; you may not feel any sort of emotion attachment to them, but you admire flowers.

Asriel enters with a tray of sandwiches and chips, and you automatically reach for one half of the sandwich.

He watches you eat for a while before commenting, "I saw how you acted at the flower shop."

You say nothing.

"I know how much you love flowers."

You manage to say, "Mm."

He hesitates before placing a hand on your knee. His eyes are still sparkling. "I'm not giving up on you, Chara," he says. "I know you're going to be okay."

You reflect on his words. You're surprised to find that they mean something to you now.

You reach down and clasp your hand over his, and his widening smile confirms that you're doing the right thing. You may not be able to reciprocate love correctly, but you can pretend. You can imagine feeling love because you know that if you could, you would love Asriel, and Frisk, and your parents. Maybe that knowledge is enough for them.

Frisk bounces into the room and steals a bite of the other half of your sandwich. You don't complain and instead reach out to ruffle their hair. It's an instinctive reaction, you realize. They give you a toothy grin.

You don't care if the smile you return to them is real is not, you're just glad it's there.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Admittedly a horrible way to start off by my first story being pretty angsty and horrible, but I suppose it's better than nothing
> 
> Most likely I'm going to be working on uploading a long series, and oneshots like this aren't probably going to be common
> 
> Anyway, comments are appreciated and thanks again for reading!


End file.
